Total Reality

This thinking man's diversion derives its premise from those smug authors who, like modern-day Dale Carnegie, rip off the gullible with quick-fix solutions. And David Bradley, one of the direct-to-video marketplace's most engaging performers, scores in this action flick bursting with novel sci-fi riffs. In a screenplay notable for its finesse with freshening up formulas, Phillip Roth and Rob Trenton send up mass-market hucksters like Anthony Robbins, who turn the success ethic into a religion. Two hundred years in the future, Military "Bridgeists", who derive their power from a 20th-Century best-seller by John Bridges (Michael Mendelsohn), devote themselves to stampi...